Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association, 19 June 2025 – When we speak of Fiji to the world, we use evocative language that calls to global visitors dreaming of golden beaches and clear waters. We present our islands to the world as pristine, unspoiled, and rich in natural beauty. And for the most part, that vision still rings true. But creeping beneath the surface—and now spilling into plain view—is another reality.
Rubbish.
In our streets. In our neighbourhoods. In our oceans.
It’s not just unsightly. It’s a growing crisis that threatens the very essence of who we are and what we stand for. We cannot market ourselves as a pristine paradise while ignoring the pollution choking our land and sea.
This is our home. And it’s time we defended it.
We’ve known this for years. Waste management in Fiji hasn’t kept pace with our growing population or the accelerating sprawl of urbanisation. Municipal councils are overwhelmed and are still doing “business as usual”.
And the result is visible—starkly, shamefully visible.
Plastic waste and litter choke our beaches. Our towns. Our rivers and seas.
For tourism—an industry that survives on the promise of pristine beauty—this isn’t a future threat. It’s a crisis that’s already here. And it’s been left to fester in plain sight.
Instead of a coordinated response, the burden falls squarely on one industry. One that’s expected to not only clean up after itself, but also after the crowds that party on our shared beaches, use them as toilets, and leave their waste behind for others to clean.
Yes, tourism generates waste. And yes, the industry accepts that responsibility, often paying more, doing more, and finding innovative ways to reduce its footprint. But that does not mean it should stand alone; held accountable for pollution it did not create.
Enough is enough. This is not just a tourism problem. It’s a national problem. And it demands national action—now.
The Pacific Recycling Foundation recently announced the development of a new recycling facility in Koronivia, Nausori. While I welcome this step, I want to be clear: the issue of recycling in Fiji has always been bigger than one organisation, one plant, or one initiative. It’s about changing a national mindset, improving broken systems, and giving Fijians back a sense of pride in their surroundings.
The adage rings true for too many of us: hotels can separate their garbage, but the trucks that collect the rubbish tend to drop it all off in the same place.
What’s the point of sorting if the system simply undoes that work down the line?
This is the reality that so many hotels, businesses, and even households face. They do the right thing—segregating plastics, tins, glass, and organics—but they watch helplessly as everything is collected together and deposited in the same landfill. For many, this leads to frustration and eventually, complacency. And that’s the danger: when people feel that their efforts are meaningless, they stop trying altogether.
But we cannot afford to stop trying. Not now. Not when the evidence of our inaction is literally piling up around us.
While this might be a developing country challenge, we could certainly learn from the likes of Sweden, which has had a 99% recycling rate for many years and where recycling is required by law for rubbish and recyclables to be separated at home before they are collected by recycling centres. Additionally, can deposit systems have been in place since 1984 and bottle deposit systems since 1994. These policies ensure that recycling and care for the environment become a social norm.
If you walk through Suva, drive through Nausori, and visit communities near urban centres, rubbish is everywhere. Look around highly populated areas and even along roadsides leading to prettier residential areas – nowhere is spared the ugly sight of carelessly tossed rubbish strewn on the sides of the road, floating in drains and trapped in mangrove swamps—it’s nothing short of heartbreaking.
Worse – we’re not just trashing the streets; we’re throwing our rubbish directly into the sea. The same sea we rely on for food, for transport, for our cultural identity.
How can we continue to eat from the sea, knowing that microplastics are working their way into the very seafood we put on our plates?
The truth is, we’ve become too comfortable with the idea that the sea will simply ‘take it away’—that somehow it is big enough to swallow our waste. But the sea isn’t swallowing it. It’s sending it back to us—onto our shores, through our food chain, into our bloodstreams and eventually into our future.
The announcement of a dedicated recycling facility in Koronivia is encouraging. While a tiny step in the right direction, particularly because the Suva-Nausori corridor is Fiji’s most densely populated (and growing) urban sprawl and therefore the source of much of the country’s waste; having a facility close to this urban hub means that the potential for real recycling—where materials are properly sorted, processed, and repurposed— is finally becoming more achievable.
But a single facility will not solve the magnitude of our waste problem.
Recycling must become more prevalent across the country, not just in pockets where infrastructure happens to exist. Waste collection with some long-term educational efforts on the hows and whys, needs to cover the whole of Fiji, not just the urban centres and definitely not just the tourism hotspots.
For too long, rural areas, settlements, and even some peri-urban communities have been excluded from regular waste services. Their garbage either piles up or gets burned, contributing to air pollution, or worse, it gets thrown into rivers and creeks that flow directly into the sea.
We must do better.
In the tourism industry, we talk a lot about sustainability. It’s a word that gets printed in glossy brochures and proudly displayed in mission statements. But sustainability is not a slogan—it requires dedicated and consistently applied strategies, planning and action and is taken extremely seriously by many in the industry.
Many have already taken steps to reduce waste: banning single-use plastics, introducing refillable amenities, increasingly using biodegradable utensils and cleaning options, recycling water, and encouraging guests to separate their trash. But the ecosystem needs to support these efforts. There’s no point asking a resort to meticulously separate recyclables if the local waste collector just lumps it all together at the end of the day.
We need an overhaul, not just of our collection systems, but of our policies and responsibilities and our collective attitudes.
That loss of pride is perhaps the most dangerous part of all.
When people don’t care about their environment, they don’t protect it. And when that environment is the backbone of our tourism industry—our biggest economic contributor—it’s not just the ecosystem that suffers. It’s jobs, livelihoods and eventually our ability to successfully market Fiji to the world as a clean, green destination.
The development of more recycling facilities is part of the answer, but it must be coupled with proper education, robust policy and accountable responsibility from municipal councils, along with visible enforcement that shows we mean it. People need to know why recycling matters and that they will be severe consequences for dumping illegally. They need to see that their separated waste actually makes a difference. They need to believe that their individual actions can contribute to a cleaner Fiji.
Hotels can and should lead by example. But they can’t carry the burden alone. They need partnerships with government, with waste management companies, with civil society, and with communities themselves.
We also need to get smarter about our materials. We should be reducing the amount of waste we generate in the first place. More composting, more reusing, refusing and more thoughtful consumption.
The Pacific Recycling Foundation’s facility in Koronivia is a welcome milestone, but it must not be the last. We need to create an entire recycling ecosystem that actually works—from the household level, to the truck that picks up the waste, to the facility that properly processes it.
If we get this right, we don’t just clean up our towns and beaches. We restore pride in our people. We protect our marine life. We preserve the beauty that draws visitors from around the world and sustains thousands of Fijians for generations to come.
This is not just about recycling. It’s about who we are as a nation and how much we truly value the environment that sustains us.
And so, I hope this new facility is not seen as just another building. I hope it becomes a catalyst—a signal that change is possible, that it is happening, and that everyone has a part to play.
Because Fiji deserves better. And our children deserve to inherit an environment we can all be proud of again.
Fantasha Lockington – CEO, FHTA (Published in the Fiji Times on 19 June 2025)
Fiji Hotel and Tourism Association
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